For Moves, Local Gymnast Special

July 18, 1990|By Phil Hersh.

Before the gymnastics competition begins a week from Sunday in the Goodwill Games, coach Bela Karolyi will ask the International Gymnastics Federation to trademark the unusual balance-beam move performed by one of his gymnasts.

The move is a triple pirouette. To do it, the gymnast spins three times on one foot while keeping the other foot balanced on the 4-inch-wide beam.

If the international federation decides the move is original, it will be forever known as an Okino, named for Betty Okino of Elmhurst, who was an unknown less than two months ago.

``People knew me, but usually for not doing very well,`` said Okino, 15.

``This is all pretty surprising.``

A year ago, she was 20th all-around in the junior national championships. In early June of this year, she was second all-around and first on the balance beam in the senior U.S. Gymnastics Championships, earning a place on the U.S. team that will meet the world`s best gymnasts in the Goodwill Games.

``And I don`t think Betty got the scores she deserved because she was so unexpected,`` Karolyi said. ``I don`t remember anyone who has made this much progress in such a short period of time.``

The period Karolyi refers to began last November, when Okino left her family in Elmhurst and moved in with the family of another gymnast so she could train in Houston with the renowned coach who has coached Olympic gold medalists Nadia Comaneci of Romania and Mary Lou Retton of the U.S.

While the changes in the last nine months of Okino`s life may seem dramatic, they are nothing compared to what happened in the first three years after her birth in 1975.

Okino`s father, Francis, and mother, Aurelia, met in Bucharest, Romania, where he had come from his native Uganda to study veterinary medicine at the same university where she was studying to be a teacher. Soon after, they were married and moved back to his hometown of Entebbe, Uganda, where both Betty and older brother Edward were born.

In 1976, the family heard bullets going over their home during the Israeli raid to liberate hostages at the Entebbe airport. By the next year, Francis Okino, chief veterinary officer of the Ugandan agriculture department, was worried enough about his relationship with the government of dictator Idi Amin that he packed up the family and moved to Romania.

The Romanian government, also run by a dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, gave the Okino elders just a five-week visa. Through the World Health Organization, Francis Okino got a grant to study for a master`s degree at the University of Minnesota. He and his wife left for the U.S. , while the children stayed with her mother in Romania.

The children joined them in the U.S. 15 months later, but the family still intended to return to Uganda. That plan was changed when they learned their house in Entebbe had been looted and the government was after them. In 1980, they asked for political asylum and settled in the LaSalle-Peru area, where Betty`s father found a job as a veterinary inspector. He has since become Illinois bureau chief for poultry and meat inspection of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In LaSalle-Peru, Betty began tumbling and then dance lessons. She and Edward were national tap-dance champions in the 9-11 age group.

By that time, though, Betty had her epiphany: seeing Retton win the gymnastics all-around gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. She wanted to become a gymnast, but because there was no gymnastics school in the immediate area, Aurelia Okino began coaching her daughter.

``I went from gym to gym studying,`` Aurelia said. ``Pretty soon, all my knowledge was gone.``

At that point, the Okinos moved to Elmhurst so Betty could train with Todd Gardner at the Illinois Gymnastics Institute. That relationship lasted four years. Last fall, the Okinos suddenly made the move to Karolyi because, in the mother`s estimation, ``Betty wasn`t achieving what she should.``

``It was my idea,`` Betty said. ``My mother didn`t want me to go.``

Gardner contests the notion that Betty Okino has been transformed since going to Houston. In a sport rife with coaching rivalries, where Karolyi has become the object of much antagonism, Gardner`s reaction is understandable.

``She really hasn`t come that far, and she wasn`t an unknown,`` Gardner said. ``Her routines have been watered down a lot since he (Karolyi) has had her.